Winter Olympics 2018: 110,000 condoms, World War Three, norovirus… but Team GB set sights on record gold medal haul

British delegation reaches an all-time high of 59 athletes and the new high watermark of expected medals shows expectations are soaring too

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By Dave Kidd

8th February 2018, 11:58 pm

Updated: 9th February 2018, 4:53 pm

THERE’S raging controversy over state-sponsored Russian doping.

There are on-going tensions about neighbouring North Korea — with the potential front line of World War Three just 50 miles away.

EPA

110,000 condoms have been handed out to athletes in the Olympic Village

And athletes have been urged to stay away from tonight’s opening ceremony in PyeongChang because temperatures are so low there are genuine fears of hypothermia.

Heaven knows why they have distributed as many as 110,000 condoms to athletes in the Olympic Village when frostbite is such a threat to the body’s extremities.

And if the cold doesn’t get you, the highly-contagious norovirus is now sweeping the area too. Apart from that though, it’s all looking hunky-dory, so let the Games begin!

For Britain an all-time high of 59 athletes have travelled and a record five-medal haul has been targeted, perhaps not surprisingly given their National Lottery funding doubled to £28million since Sochi.

Getty Images - Getty

Britain have sent a record 59 athletes to the Games and hope for a record-breaking medal haul

PA:Press Association

There is a blanket ban on Russian athletes but it won't stop many competing

Yet any talk of ‘financial doping’ should be avoided, especially when there’s actual doping to contemplate.

Despite a supposed blanket ban on Russia, there will still be around three times more Russians than Brits competing here.

Some 169 supposedly clean ‘independent’ Russian athletes have been invited by the IOC.

And 28 convicted drug cheats had their lifetime Olympic bans overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport last week.

PA:Press Association

No pressure... but Elise Christie is Britain's best hope of a gold medal

Arfa Griffiths - The Sun

SunSports Dave Kidd is in Pyeongchang to watch the drama unfold

The British Olympic Association has come a long way over the past two decades — their ruthless drive for medals in the summer becoming hugely controversial.

And to listen to GB’s sole medallist from Lake Placid, figure skating champion Robin Cousins, our ultra-professional winter games set-up is unrecognisable from that in 1980.

Cousins will tell you that in his day, each competitor was on their own, with Team GB not actually existing.

He trained in the middle of a speed-skating oval in the dark at 5am and when he was injured he had to rely on treatment from the physio at Bristol City FC, who knew nothing about skating.

Team GB bobsleigh star Lamin Deen and his team warm up for Winter Olympics

Team GB remain underdogs at the Winter Olympics. How could they not be, coming from a nation with so little snow and ice?

Scottish short-track speed-skater Elise Christie — a three-time reigning world champion — is comfortably Britain’s best hope for gold. Christie will compete over 500 metres, 1,000m and 1,500m but her events are mayhem on ice, as unpredictable as sport gets.

Getty - Contributor

Athletes are going to have to handle the freezing temperatures

When expected to medal in Sochi four years ago, Christie, 27, was disqualified from two events and fell in the other. This time she has a stronger mentality but still with her fingers firmly crossed.

Lizzy Yarnold bids to become the first Brit in history to defend a Winter Olympic title as she hurtles down a mountain on a tea-tray at 90mph in a definition of lunacy they call the skeleton.

But of course the next 17 days are not all about the possibility of British medals — these are the Games which gave us Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards and the Jamaican bobsleigh team.

AP:Associated Press

Lizzy Yarnold bids to become the first Brit in history to defend a Winter Olympic title

They are the World Slipping and Sliding Championships — with all the thrills and frivolity that suggests.

As in any Olympics, unknowns will capture the hearts of the world and the wooden-spoon merchants can become as famous as those with gongs around their necks.

There will be a skeleton contestant from Ghana and a Nigerian female bobsleigh team and all this on the same peninsula as Kim Jong-un with his rogue nuclear missile programme and his even dodgier barnet.

Everything you need to know about the Winter Olympics 2018 in PyeongChang, South Korea

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North Korea and neighbours South Korea remain technically at war

After tense negotiations between North and South Korea — two nations which are still technically at war — a unified women’s ice hockey team will compete in PyeongChang, along with eight other assorted skaters and skiers from north of the world’s most significant border.

Dictator Kim has sent his sister Kim Yo-jung to the opening ceremony and if she survives the -20C temperatures, we will do our best to collar her in the media mixed zone to ask whether her brother’s barber is going to be executed any time soon.

This ought to be fun.

Don’t miss a moment of the Olympic Winter Games on Eurosport and Eurosport Player. Go to www.Eurosport.co.uk